1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a vehicle having an air-conditioning function and a display function.
2. Related Art
In recent automobiles and other vehicles, driving assistance systems are used to assist an occupant in driving the vehicle. For example, warnings are issued in relation to foreign objects on a road or an inter-vehicle distance, driving operations are assisted, route guidance to a destination is provided, and driving skills are displayed.
Therefore, although it is sufficient in a conventional vehicle to dispose measuring instruments such as a speedometer and a fuel gauge on a front panel provided in front of the occupant, in recent vehicles it is necessary to provide a display device such as a liquid crystal device, for example, on the front panel so that a large amount of information can be displayed. Moreover, the display device is preferably disposed in an upper portion of the front panel so that the occupant, whose view is oriented frontward above the front panel, can check the information without greatly shifting his/her frontward sightline. Accordingly, a display device disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) 2009-190675 is likewise disposed in an upper central portion of the front panel. Furthermore, to reinforce a driving assistance function, a screen of a display device installed in a vehicle is preferably increased in size so that a large amount of information can be displayed.
In a vehicle such as an automobile, however, an air outlet through which a conditioned airflow is blown out into an occupant compartment is conventionally provided in the upper portion of the front panel. In a typical automobile, the air outlet is provided in four locations in the upper portion of the front panel, namely left and right locations in front of a driving seat and left and right locations in front of a front passenger seat. As a result, a driver and an occupant in the front passenger seat can each adjust the orientation of slats provided on the left and right air outlets as desired while remaining seated. Since each occupant can adjust the orientation of the conditioned airflow surrounding him/herself, the occupants can travel in comfort.
Hence, in a vehicle such as an automobile, air outlets are provided side by side on the left and right sides of the upper portion of the front panel, and as a result, it is not easy to secure further space in the upper portion of the front panel to dispose a display member such as a display device. In JP-A 2009-190675, therefore, an air outlet in the upper central portion of the front panel is removed, and in its place, a display device is disposed in the upper central portion of the front panel. In this case, a conditioned airflow is no longer blown out from the upper central portion of the front panel, and therefore an air-conditioning function of the vehicle is impaired.